Animatics

It has been a week of inactivity but finally - animatics!

One of the most crucial stages in the production of our film, the animatic has to be done right - as mentioned in earlier entries, the timing is a big factor for how well the humour can be expressed.
Chuck Jones, who had directed several Merry Melodies cartoons (Road Runner, Bugs Bunny etc) was a master of timing the humour in his animations. His cartoons have several tricks such as delaying the inevitable misfortune, giving the actions a tempo and most commonly tricking expectations - one of the older tricks in the book.

Having mentioned this, these are the tricks we intend to use with our team's animation!

Today, we went into G14 once again to re-record the voice acting one final time. Issues with the track's 'bouncing' from last time meant that the animatics couldn't be created - the animation is certainly one key factor, of course, but the timing with the audio means everything for this feature. Ben and Liam were charitable to come along in the morning for one final round. Unfortunately however, the recording studio had difficulties with correctly sending the output through to the speakers from the main mic. Sara, our producer, was frantically trying to fix the cause and eventually turned to finding some technical support. Al Green and James - both technicians for the sound studios, were away though. Sara eventually requested Jon Hunt to see if he can find a solution, despite sound not being his area of expertise. Jon resolved the problem - restarting the computer. Hurray!

We jumped right into recording the audio once more and finished in suitable timing. The lines were done so often that Ben, Liam and Tom had no difficulties in delivering them. We finished somewhat early despite the issues, so what better way to spend time in the recording studio than to sing some of our favourites?

Later in G01, Ben processed the sound recording and as a group we pieced together where to put the audio in for our first draft of the animatics.

Tom had some issues with the continuity in the later scene of Bruce dropping his trousers; he believes it couldn't make sense that he's still there and decides to drop them suddenly. I gave my two cents, stating that the shock factor is more important at that stage of the story than why he'd do it.

Next week, we can finally begin the animation! Flash is a versatile piece of software, and we spent most of last week getting to grips with the program, working on the Animatics as we did it.

Can't wait to get this underway!

Making Progress

Team 3 met up in G01 today - today isn't Acting Workshops for us so we took it as an opportunity to start cracking on with learning Flash and Animatics.

We headed over to the IT building, to room W104 so we could use the computers there for Flash and other means. During that time I meandered over to my home to pick up the graphics tablet mainly for helping some of the team members get a gist for using one.

Sarah Pollard thankfully put together the 'character bible' - the assortment of character designs both finalised and scrapped. Using these, I got to work with the character turn-arounds, finishing two of the designs at about 4pm. I sketched them first, and then traced over the top using Adobe Illustrator.

Voice Recording Take 2

This Thursday, 24th, was the lecture for 1pm but before that, we met up in room G23 for another take on voice acting.

Due to the changes within the script, it was necessary to re-record what was done before - any tweaks and amendments to bolster the strength of the plot would also help a great deal. Sure enough, there was one major change to the performance; Ben Greenwood (courteously helping us again) changed his initial voice (low-tone, randy) to a royal, upperclass and regal sort.  Reasons for this - other than simply being all the more humorous, is because we realised that the ludicrously of the scenario wouldn't flow too well with the former personality, and the context of a some-what forced woman voice fits in context with the male lavatory.

It took quite a few takes to get the voicing just right - sometimes it would be received too quietly, or there would be moments of staccato. Ben had to put some light strain on his throat to present the voice, so naturally the poor man would slip on some cases - thankfully it didn't take too long, otherwise he wouldn't of had any voice left at the end of the day.

Once we finished up with The Presenter's lines, it was onto the two focal characters - Bruce and Timid Tim. The former played by Tom and the latter by Liam, who again took time out to assist us. For the most part, there were some only slight (albeit still necessary) changes within the dialogue, but the big break was during the bum-squeeze scene. For this part, we deemed it best for Liam to improvise the reaction - and how, and from what? Real-life bum squeeze, of course! Liam's reactions weren't just hilarious, they were genuine which is was all too important in making the humour believable. Again, this too required quite a few takes mostly because we wanted to see would we could get out of Timid Tim's shock but also because some responses weren't what we were looking for. Saying that, however, the best altogether was Liam letting loose a plethora of naughty swearing which brought the performance home. To cover up the swearing, we cut off line delivery before it jumped into Grade A language.

We finished at 12pm, just in time for an hour's break before the lecture.

Foley Recording

There are visuals to present the audience that the location is in the men's lavatory, but what about audio? Without it, there isn't the extra dimension - the sound - to immerse people into the setting.

With that said, I headed down to G23 today to meet up with Tom, Phil and Kamil at 2:00pm. The actual scheduled meet-up was for half-past two, but I decided to get the room unlocked and recording equipment from the booking office. The booking office itself was closed early today (missing the sign in a hurry) but fortunately, the Equipment Hiring desk were able to carry out the rest of the plan. 

There were some slight confusions with the booking (Ben Oren booked the studio for today) but regardless, it was cleared up and I began setting up the studio, microphones and all. Phil Farmer turned up and helped out further - he also brought along a bowl and 6 packs of bottled water for the peeing effects! Thomas and Kamil arrived momentarily, though we were lost somewhat on getting inputs and outputs to correctly work and configure - fortunately a staff member associated with Sound recording was nearby to get us going.

We cracked on with recording the various sounds of urination. Initially, Phil tried squeezing the water out of the bottle and into the bowl but the microphone picked up the cracks and squeaks of the plastic. Moreover, despite the sprinkling of water sounding quaint on Phil's end, it was a deluge on ours. It was far too heavy to sound natural - something that editing wouldn't take far enough to fix.

Phil headed back home to pick up his plastic measuring jug; pouring the collected water out of there has a much greater control over the velocity and force of the, ahem, stream. I also scurried home to pick up my HandyCam for more documenting. Back in the studio, Phil experimented with various means towards getting the flow to sound natural. Better results came when the water began by hitting the sides of the bowl, then flowing into the body - this sort of process does came when weeing into the urinals after all. Characteristics associated with urination were applied as well, such as the last-second pauses. The urination sounds that were on target were the ones that enticed us to go spend a penny. Tom couldn't hold his bladder after a while when hearing the recordings over and over.

VIDEO HERE

When satisfied with the final outcome, we moved onto the other important follies - the most important being the jeans dropping. Getting the right sense of weight and power was harder than we had first suspected. Often, the initial drop would be too soft and staggered, and the actual impact was too rugged. Phil's belt also didn't have enough metal to achieve the jingling, so in its place he used a pair of keys to simulate the effect. Likewise, clothing outside of trousers were experimented to attain a heavy feel.

Views on how the jeans should actually drop were also contested; Phil was satisfied that sound of impacts were good enough to give a believable sense towards the trousers touching ground - Tom however wasn't satisfied that they matched the character and shock-factor of the scene. Saying that, we settled on splicing the better parts of the 'drop' and the 'crash' together to compose the right form of sound effect.

We finished just in time for the studio needing its equipment back, 4:25pm. Tomorrow, we'll be doing the next part of the Voice Recording though it largely depends on whether Ben Greenwood (who voices the presenter) can make it for 10am. Sarah Pollard will be back with us too as today was her big day for net ball.

Design Stages!

Despite being a straight-forward narrative with a simplistic setup, an important aspect we're still working with is the designs - since the visual aesthetics are kept to a minimum for Flash (where it is to be animated), easy readability in both the scenes, perspectives, and most of all - characters - is important not only for the audience's attention span but also the humour, which is course an integral part of the movie.

Today, we met up at the usual time and place - 10am in B124. Since Tom and Phil were missing in action yesterday, we had to post-pone our plans, but nevertheless, we made headway! Our plan today was to record both sound effects and voice acting in the recording studio but unfortunately it was booked up today; Andy however brought it to our attention that we need to suss out our character's profiles before heading on and he was right. 

Zodac star signs, as he recommended, were a good starting point for drawing the personalities, behaviours, likes and dislikes etc forward. We decided the clumsy Australian be named Bruce (despite it never being mentioned throughout the story), and be an Aeris - a masculine, neurotic/task orientated, positive star sign. For the protagonist himself - the inferior, extroverted corner-dweller, we're still in the process of filling in his personality to the fullest.

We also decided to keep consistency in check. Originally, the film opened up in a 1900s silent-film era title screen - following with a monotone, scratched film. The design style was ditched since consistency ran awry with the presence of urinals and characters dressed in present-day clothing.

In the afternoon, we decided to work further on character designs. Phil and Kamil worked on digitising the designs in Illustrator, and I did turn-arounds for the character Bruce - although his clothing design were to be changed at that stage from a jacket to a white vest.

Speaking of designs, here are Kamil's works so far:

Side view of the urinals.

Behind view of the urinals - the wall is transparent.

Profile view of the urinals and the cubicle.

Semi-final design for the presenter.

Early sketches.

Various face designs - inspired from multiple CGi films.

Designs for the protagonist.

Tests for the proportion.

Cleaned up illustration for the scene - note the brick wall.

Early sketches of the protagonist.

Three urinal scene.

Tomorrow, we'll be doing some further sound designing. Sarah, our producer, may or may not be there depending on her games for Net Ball. The room will be booked out for Wednesday and Thuresday to do sound effects and voice recording, respectively.

Active Acting

As intended, today was for some reference in acting!

Met up with Kamil on the way to B124, but apparently it was being used - Sarah was on her as well, so instead we headed to the life drawing studio next door and waited for Tom. During that time, Kamil showed us the character designs he whipped up for the presenter - he essentially stuck to the sexual appearance that Tom was after, drawing from inspiration such as The Incredible's Elastigirl and Edith Mode. Sarah took the most liking to Elastigirl's design inspiration, whereas I felt that another design of his - a lady of Victorian-era civility - nailed the feel of her juxtaposition. That said, the choice is down to our director, who arrived shortly thereafter.

Our plan was to have Tom, along with Phil Farmer, act out some of the scenes which are now in the early storyboarding stages. Phil wasn't available however, as he is ill. Instead, Tom gave his friend Ben Oren a call and he popped on over to lend a hand. Ben was the original partner to Tom during his pitching act, so it certainly helped to retain the same essence that was presented.

I was a fool and forgot to charge up my video camera, so it only had about 12 minutes of power left! Even then, I managed to get all of the important shots in. We tried a variety of different acts, recreated, and filmed in different angles - some had to be changed and modified though. One in particular was the rule of "no touching"; at first, the antagonist would shake around the unfortunate protagonist next to him with his spare arm in a rather crass and flimsy manner. When acting it out however, we felt the action wasn't getting across the "no touching" rule in a clear enough context so we thought about other ideas.

I suggested the antagonist wipe his hands over the protagonist's face, or maybe crossing streams. The latter wouldn't translate well into the humour, and whilst wiping a hand on somebody's face could give shock and disgust, Sarah brought up the point that it would be too hard to animate. (And given my record for the 30 second narrative, I'm unwilling to task risks this time) Eventually, Tom decided that the antagonist give our poor hero's bum a cheeky squeeze. The idea is simple enough to shown through the film's simplistic visuals but punchy enough to warrant a surprise.

We took a couple of takes on this act, with the 3rd going forward on Ben's input of the protagonist letting out a gasp. The extra sound and bounce really added a lot more to it, and is easier to express in our early years as animators.

We finished up, and Sarah had to head off for her game in net ball. (Hope it went well for her.) Tom and the gang were hungry and felt inclined to head over to a McDonalds or Nando's. Me and Kamil headed back to our homes, though.

Urinal Studying Day

The title should give it away, but also we got the voice recording underway.

Today we were meeting up at 11am. Sarah Pollard and Tom showed us a reworking of the script, tweaked from the input of Phil and others yesterday. Sarah managed to book the sound recording studio and even get Al (second name here) to give us a run down of using the controls. The sound studio has been refurbished since last term, since the room beyond the computers was full of junk, mess and such.

With my camera at the ready, me, Tom, Kamil and Phil cracked on with a necessary task towards the project - studying the mens lavatories. Actually it was more or less to take photos of them since trying to actually design the scene will be tricky without some reference shots. The first one we found and already a woman came past and questioned our motifs. Trying to explain our reasoning for investigation was tough because, well, we couldn't really give one. Even then, this is the University for the Creative Arts, so people should expect students to be undergoing inane antics like ours. With each lavatory we found, they were thankfully empty. I hustled with the shots to make sure no one would walk into 4 men standing around.

Reporting back to Sarah Pollard, Andy Joule came around and gave us some advice towards time management - mainly to organise what to do each week rather than specifically go into detail for each day. It's true, since our plan is to evaluate what we've done from the previous work and from there onwards, plan what to do.

We went on a lunch-break and at 2:00pm, met up at the sound recording studio to put the draft of the script into action. Doing so, we can get a better feel for the visual input and progressing narrative once the voices come into play. Ben Greenwood was there to provide some assistance in voice work - he's in fact a Director for another group but stealing him payed some good money! The sound technician arrived shortly and (re)taught us the basics of setting up the sound studio. He also showed us how to tweak the audio output until the levels were just right, and didn't question our animation subject.

Speaking of our animation, the beginning is going to have a woman of high-cultured, posh background to present the film's namesake and teach the audience. Initially, Sarah Pollard was going to be the voice behind this character (for obvious reasons) but after hearing Ben Greenwood's first few lines of delivery...we were settled. Ben has to be the voice! It's too spot on for anyone else - at least at this stage.

Tom voiced the awkward Australian man that invades the protagonist's personal space - and his friend voiced the protagonist himself.

Group 3 initial work on sound recording.

Due to Ben's performance we've decided to change the visual look of the presenter to a sexy broad, Jessica Rabbit type for now. 

Tomorrow, we're going to film some basic facial expressions as well as acting to help get the subtle gestures down in our animation. Also, the character designs will be further developed and Kamil will of sketched up some designs for the scene.

It has been 400 years!

Of course the last entry joked that I wouldn't finish it and how.

From this point onwards, aside from getting the blog's heart to be beating once more, it's also going public; this will be the first entry my animation group (more on this later) and course friends will be likely to read. (HELLO HI!)

To sum up last term for everyone else, I was assigned a project to produce a narrative with exactly 30 seconds of animation. My idea was to produce just a simple animation of a person waking up grumpily to find, from his kitchen window, the locale covered with snow. Animation-wise it was to include walking within spacial depth (towards and away the viewpoint) along with subtle body gestures - just some daily stuff. Though boring, the idea was to help me to practice the basics in movement and animating to perspective, the latter here being the most important aspect to me.

Naturally, though, setting a challenge is easy enough - the sheer complexity of trying to animate something in perspective movement, the amount of minute details you have to adjust, is damn overbearing. I put off trying to do the animation in fear of screwing up the designs and ending with a result I hated. Nearing the deadline, I had no option. But having no option was the only motivation that got me going in the end as I had to watch my animation result in the character wobbling and mutating in some grotesque fashion - and this was the result of clockwork hours, where drafts would be done over and over until the finished line. It was painfully obvious that I didn't know how to draw or animate properly, and that I should be sticking to bouncy exaggerated forms that I detest so much.

Despite the sleepless nights, it eventually dawned on me that I wasn't going to be reaching the 30 second mark by Monday (Library would be closed over the weekend, where DVD burning is possible) so I neglectfully sent my course leader an e-mail to go ahead and put me on referral, though he couldn't do that before assessment so that was a bummer. Despite that, I rushed through with what I produced onto DVD and I fell into complete dismay with myself, over my lack of confidence from before. The projects were due in for assessment around January 10th.

Well, come the dawn and referral doesn't mean I'm off the course. Several breakdowns and support from my sister, I handed in the work for my Digital Skills and essay (which I passed, I'm surprised), and took two weeks off whilst waiting for the next semester to begin at the 31st of January. During that time I practiced drawing and finished the rest of my 30-second narrative, due for February 11th. 

Anyway, so begins the new semester!

The next big three projects are Movement, Story and Structure - a continuation of Animation Principles where we are now put into groups consisting of a Director, Producer and a team of 3-4. Digital Skills 2 were this time we're learning 3D CGi software - mainly Autodesk's Softimage. Finally, Mediation and Meaning - lectures about animation given by a new staff member who is nice, and fairly well organised!

For this post I'll focus on the Movement, Story and Structure project, as it's (unsurprisingly) the biggest out of the three. As mentioned above, we've been put into groups but before this we've been tasked with presenting a pitch based on our idea for an animation. The idea has to revolve around the themes of either time, family, phobia or an infomercial (which arguably was mistaken for Public Service Announcement). Before then, we were given a week to come up with some ideas and frequently we were split into various different groups in order to encourage various opinions, feedbacks and inspiration from other students. Some ideas I heard were pretty good!

The pitches went on throughout Monday, and everyone had different methods of explaining their idea. Personally I wish I wasn't so stuttered. Luko's idea was pretty solid and he kept himself fairly smooth and controlled. After the pitches finished, we received our group listings the following day. Some of the choices were pretty surprising! I'm happy that Nikki and Luko get to realise their ideas. I'm in Group 3 - which to the side of the blog will show you who's role is what.

Thomas Jennings the Director - and his idea is, as the title pretty much sums it up - urinal etiquette. (Ur-EYE-nal) If you'd of seen his pitching, it come as no shock over his position as director. With the help of Ben Oren, he acted out most of his idea with some intriguing subtlety (which we hope to match in the animation). It was damn entertaining to watch, and no one could his trousers drop coming. My hunch is that Andy's past experience with being an actor helped him to better resonate towards Tom's idea but he certainly showed a lot of bravery regardless.

As Group 3, we first got together on Thursday before the lecture for Mediation & Meaning. It was just Sarah Pollard, Thomas Jennings and me at the time, but the producer sorted out a rough plan and schedule for next week, as well as discussing what we should focus on first. Tom recommended bringing some Haribo on the odd occasion for us and I whole-heartedly agreed. In the planning was some character designing, a script and what to do generally for the story.